by David

Hey all,

today, I want to share with you the second project I finished in 2019 (at some point, I hope I will be able to take some pics of finished project no 1).

It's a figure I painted as a present for my friend Thomas, a mini from his own WWII miniatures series Stoessi's Heroes. Her name is Simone Segouin, also known under her nom-de-guerre Nicole Minet, and she was French Resistance fighter during World War II. Please check out her story over at Wikipedia.

by Josua Lai

Less is more

Sounds simple but this turned out to be the hardest point of all to understand and master. Why so?

Try to think of famous brands and they're logo. What have all these logos in common quite surely? They are simple, cut down to a simplicity where only that thing is left that matters in case of the logos the name or the brand. Due the simplicity of them,don't get me wrong simple does not means easy to creat, the logos they are easily recognisable.

How can we implement this on your dioramas and bases now?

I often see scenes and dioramas that have a great story to tell but the way they are build or constructed does not really help to build up or carry the story. They are to crowded or to busy for example, which is not a bad thing done on purpose. This is why I forced myself to cut down on the essentials. Asking me with every element I added does it help the story or scene. By doing that I felt the experience I gained with every piece I finished.

Keep it "simple"

On the firsts sight sounds pretty close to my first point. But let me explain... If I build a scene my goal is to tell a story. The story could just start for example a lone survivor is leaving his vault. The story could also end for example a Dark Elf hunter is hunting down his prey and just hit the deadly arrow right into the target. But you get also the option where the story has no real start or a real end and that for me is often the sweet spot. Lets talk about with my mini diorama of the cat swimming on a piece of wood in the ocean. Now try to think about a start and an end for this story. I am 99% sure you would tell a different start and end of a story then I would. And exactly that is what I am striving for. I want the viewer to feel something I want him or her to care about the Story and I personally feel like this happens in a special way when the story is not to complex and pretty clear. This does not mean that you not have to think about how you transfer the story. This means that you have to think about how you could guide the viewer and make him feel certain ways, indicating some things. For example the rather big waves around the cat are giving an indicator about the surrounding. The colours are chosen to be rather cold on purpose etc. To break it down:

Keep your story simple and visible. It is not a bad thing to not tell the start or the end of a story. Use colour or surroundings to softly indicate what is happening. Guide the viewers eye softly but guide it!

Consistency

Another rather big word when it comes to creating stuff. I want to focus on consistency in size. I learned that if you build minimalistic and small bases you have to be aware of the dimensions of things like stones, twigs and other elements. It goes hand in hand with all the above points. Rethink if it is necessary or not and use elements wisely instead of just placing random stuff.

Consistency is also a big thing for me regarding the whole process of building especially when it comes to the finish of a plinth, this means that I also pay attention in areas that are not on the main base itself. If I have sides to sand down or plasticcard areas that going along with a wooden plinth I putt at least the same amount of attention to make them smooth and appealing to the eye as I would for the main area where the action is going on. If I look at it as a whole it should be non irritating things around the scene, at least that is and will be an important thing to me.

by Roman aka jar

Hey Jungle,

a quick little update on the seminars for the first half of 2019.Find all information via the Seminar Roadmap 2019.

Just recently I held the first seminar this year in Augsburg with a great handful of students, my Material Masterclass. Thanks everyone for joining up! It was awesome to see you all learn so much! I will prepare the review for the blog soonish! Next one will be in Hamburg, Germany and I will teach my one day OSL Masterclass there. Really looking forward to the students who signed up for it!

While most of the other seminars are filling up greatly and also first appointments for private coachings during the year are made I got sad news on one hand too:

Unfortanetely the Beginner Seminar in Graz, Austriahas to be cancelled due the small number of people interested. This is now official. Sorry to Austria. Thanks to those of you who are going to travel from Graz to April's Augsburg Seminar! You rock!

If you want to join one of my seminars,
feel invited to check back with

by Roman aka jar

Good Morning Jungle,

just recently I finished another figure that I was starting during a private coaching for explanation purposes. It is a Games Workshop Nurgle Chaos Warrior that I converted a little bit to make him look even more nasty.

The purpose of this paintjob was to make the figure look good for gaming.

Nurgle Chaos Warrior

Games Workshop, 32 mm

This model is for sale. If you are interested to make it yours, please find details in my PDF cataloge!

by Roman aka jar

Hey Jungle People,

slowly the prizes from the MV Challenge 2018 are dropping in via postal service to their new owners. Slowly. Three random prize pool parcels still have to be sent to their new owners. You can check back with the winners over here!

I just have to bring home the suprise boxes from the studio one by one (I do not own a car) and sent them. Thank you for your patience everyone!

Henrik who has won the 1st prize in the Marie Fleur Challenge with his great diorama - my illustration from Marie Fleur - contacted me as the postal service managed to break the glass of the frame. He did build up something on his own now which I wanted to show you! So beautiful! Thank you, Henrik!

So far!
Soon all the challenge prizes are sent!
Stay tuned for more jungle content!

by Roman aka jar

Good Wednesday Morning jungle,

welcome to another step by step insight into a project I did paint in 2017. You can not imagine the amount of articles I got from this era, still unwritten. Well, what can I do? Yes, write them for you so you can enjoy them and hopefully be inspired :)

If you like to support or say thanks the monkeys of Massive Voodoo in what they do, please feel invited to drop a jungle donation in their direction via paypal or check their miniatures they got on sale here.

This article is about the steps I took and the thoughts I made to finish this bust, a sculpt by Raul Garcia Latorre:

First,I fell in love with the sculpt when I saw it for the first time. A fierce warrior priest that could be easily transported into the realm of Warhammer Fantasy. My senses were tingeling so I decided to paint him up. This is always a good sign and I often follow this call.

After preparing the bust and removing mould lines and glueing everything, except the sword together I decided for a very uncommon priming method ...

I used GW's colorful primers to prime the figure. Using a brown, blue grey and yellow here. Why?Well, I was just bored starting always with black and white and my thought behind this was to place the colors I wanted to place influanced by the primers guideline.

Well, it did not work as I was to shy somehow. After I placed all my basic colors on the bust I quickly realized that this was a neat idea, but I was not able to pull it together somehow. I got stuck on the red dark brown color from below and some gentle touch of yellow in the highlights of the face.

I do not see such things as a mistake. It is just part of the journey.

After this step I worked more and more on the true metallic metal - using mainly Scale75 silver colors - which in this case was quite the surface. Slowly the figure turned from a cool sculpt that I want to paint to a massive metal monster that was exhausting to paint.

Still keeping that red glow from below in the process ... if you flip him and look from below.

If you look from the front you don't see that ... yet.

The face was the most fun part on the bust for me. I enjoyed playing with skin variation colors, like the yellow influance on the forehead, the reds and oranges in the middle area of the face as these areas are packed with organs that need a lot of blood: eyes, nose, ears ...

The lower parts and neck kept a touch of green in it.

I wanted more of that red back, so I used the airbrush and sprayed it in from a steep low angle.

From below, yes.

From the top, no.

Having a second light on the figure, a colorful from below allows the figure to deliver more interesting areas, especially when you got such big metal surfaces that reflect from here to there or elsewhere. Like a mirror.

I also painted more detail to the armour by checking back with its upper light situation. It is a pain in the booty to take proper photos of this, but who am I telling you this. Everyone who paints a lot of true metallic metal knows about this issue.

So far the red glow was just sprayed to the figure and not really included in the concept ...

So it was time to paint it over again, but using redish tinted metal colors for it. Focused on strong edge highlights from bellow. Kept it dark in areas of shadow and the overall look closed in much better.

My highlights on the armour turned blueish, cold. I did the same to the hair, skin and cloak as there is no reason to change highlight color here. Metal is always a great guideline to show the color of the sky and so delivers a guideline of colors you should use to bring other areas to brightness.

The cold/warm contrast appearing in the figure is really enjoyable, even it is far from my initial primer plan :D

This photo of a brush sneaked in this step by step. I do not find a reason for it, so let's take it as a beautiful photo of a brush ...

In the final stages I increased the contrast from dark to bright areas in the armour by glazing in darker shadows and painting stronger highlights. This is when the shine of a polished armour appears.

I was checking back with single volumes of the armour that pointed downwards and should recieve stronger reddish influance and added this with reds and oranges.

Here you can see what I mean. I focused with more orange and yellowish orange to the edges of the metal that would reflect the strongest.

For the final steps I increased the level of detail here and there. Mainly on the face, smaller highlights, deeper small shadows. The sword was painted and added to the light situation with the reds. Then glued to the figure.

Somehow I was really fascinated by the character of the bust, while painting it was kind of too much metal going on . I know, some of you will say, there can never be enough metal :D ... The way I paint is always from a rough overall look to detail. Usually in the middle of it I know the final look and where I want to go. I see my vision. Somehow I was missing this in this bust as I saw too much metal all the time. Nonetheless I finished it, but far from my initial primer color vision. Well, happens. I am really happy about the amount of textures I was able to bring into the metallics and it was a pleasure working on that red light.I hope you enjoyed the insight!More to come in the future!
Keep on happy painting!

The Goal

The course goal is to provide a complete overview of all the materials, the main techniques, and the methods to start with miniature sculpting.

Seriously: Is it possible to learn to sculpt miniatures in just one day ?

The answer is obviously NO. :-) :-)

But you can learn what you need to improve yourself and start with the right step.

While I'm showing the tools i use most

What We Did

The students sculpted a 1/10 bust and they learned the basics of traditional sculpture, we talked about:

-What are miniature sculpting

-Link between 3D and Traditional-Sculpting process analisys- Intro to different Materials, and how to use them- Basic techniques with first masses and volumes- Intro to to create basic texture such as hair, skin and scales-How to use the references to sculpt a thumbnail-Examples of clay sketching and creation of unique characters-How to create the different armature and how to correctly set the supports for the sculpture- Cooking, finishing, and presentation of the models

Clay sketching

Masses and Volumes

Create textures (introduce)

Filippo helps me to show better details

First part to create e bust

We also talked about exhibitions, painting and how to start sculpting miniatures as amateur way or professional way.

We had a lot of fun﻿, and I'm sure we'll repeat this workshop in the future.

If you like to support or say thanks the monkeys of Massive Voodoo in what they do, please feel invited to drop a jungle donation in their direction via paypal or check their miniatures they got on sale here.

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... MASSIVE VOODOO’s jungle, where some apes share their thoughts and ideas around their beloved passion, the hobby of miniature painting and sculpting.

Feel welcome to come and check the jungle for tons of articles, interesting tutorials, creative competitions and the simple joy of happy painting hidden behind every tree. We hope that everyone finds their own banana in here, if not do not hesitate to ask the apes. We are more than happy for you to post in the comments section to help turn this jungle into the lush, overgrown painting corner we hope it will become.